Renault's F1 team made some prodigious progress before the Spanish Grand Prix. Having managed to qualify no better than ninth in the first three races of the year, lead driver Fernando Alonso put in a superhuman effort to qualify second in front of an adoring home crowd in Barcelona. It's a sign of the competitiveness of F1 racing that the army of British-based engineers behind the Spaniard had worked on improving the car in no fewer than 19 different areas to make that difference. Regardless of all that effort (and expense), the race would prove that Alonso's Renault is still noticeably in arrears compared with the rival cars of Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes and BMW, which filled the first four places in the results.Such is the pace of the Ferraris -- which finished the Spanish round in a comfortable 1-2 result for World Champion Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa -- that both drivers were instructed to back off before the finish. There was no such luxury for Alonso, who lost a place in the scramble to the first corner and held a strong third place until making his first fuel stop, after which he dropped to 11th place, only to withdraw later following an engine failure. Although the latest rev-limited F1 engines are supposedly bullet-proof, it's difficult not to speculate that Alonso's merciless grandstanding drive -- perhaps encouraged before the start by a firm handshake from no less a dignitary than King Juan Carlos -- contributed to the smoky blow up that left him to hitch a lift back to the pits on a motorcycle.With two DNFs from his four starts, Alonso has scored only six points this year, trailing in 10th place in the title chase. He'd acknowledged before the start there's no chance he'll be able to contend for this year's championship, least of all with the super-confident Raikkonen, whose two wins have yielded 29 points, 10 more than Lewis Hamilton of McLaren-Mercedes. Alonso has gone so far as to say that the best he can hope for anywhere is seventh place, confirming he doesn't expect Renault to get much closer to the three leading teams.It didn't have to be like this. At the end of last year, Alonso quit the McLaren-Mercedes team with two years to go on a three-year contract, by mutual consent, following the breakdown of relations with team boss Ron Dennis. Yet when he joined McLaren from Renault after winning back-to-back world titles with the French team in 2005 and 2006, it was the realization of a childhood dream. In the days when he'd started winning kart races as a schoolboy, he'd joke with his father, "Has Ron Dennis called yet?"On the podium after the season-ending 2005 Brazilian GP, the only race a McLaren won that year, he'd found himself standing next to Dennis. It was Alonso who told the English team boss how much he admired McLaren, a declaration that naturally earned him an invitation to discuss things further, in private. Alonso had already won that year's title, yet he eagerly signed up to join McLaren in 2007 -- even though it would involve an uncomfortable carryover year with Renault.The bone of contention that eventually would lead to Alonso's departure was to be the team's other signing, Lewis Hamilton. Although the Englishman, just 22 years old at the time, was a rookie to F1 racing, he'd dominated the GP2 "feeder" series in 2006. More important, he'd been on McLaren's books as a cadet driver since he was 14 and had become like a second son to Dennis.At first, Alonso was unimpressed. Evidently confident he had the beating of Hamilton, he openly scoffed at the youngster's lap times -- not to mention one big crash -- in preseason tests. On the face of it, that scorn was well justified. After all, Alonso had become the youngest-ever F1 champion in 2005, and both of his titles had been won against the might of Ferrari and seven-time champion Michael Schumacher.It therefore came as a shock when Hamilton showed race-winning speed in his first-ever GP, even daring to snatch a position from Alonso in a neat maneuver at the start. Alonso only went ahead after his new rival had been impeded by a slower driver, but afterward he challenged a reporter who dared to ask what it was like to be beaten. "I have in the past had a teammate [who made] a more successful start to the season than I, but he wasn't close by the end of the season and this is all we're seeing here," he says.That assertion was turned around at the third race, in which he was beaten fair and square by Hamilton. By now the Englishman was ahead on points, and when he won the Canadian GP in June, Alonso found himself on the back foot. He convinced himself that he was being deliberately handicapped by a team, McLaren, which showed him no favors despite his own contention that he was the number-one driver.It is difficult to imagine how Alonso had allowed himself to labor under that delusion. As a Renault driver since 2001, he'd lived in England and immersed himself in the racing culture of his adopted country. Yet somehow, he'd failed to study McLaren's approach to racing, its even-handed treatment of its drivers, and Dennis's undisguised contempt for the overt favoritism Ferrari exercised toward (and at the demand of) Michael Schumacher.When Dennis tried to get closer to Alonso, to show him there was nothing personal in the McLaren treatment, Alonso felt patronized and shunned his boss. In Canada, after making a couple of mistakes under pressure, he felt alienated by the team's wildly enthusiastic reception for Hamilton's debut victory. Back in Europe, it was noticeable that the Spaniard wasn't even talking to Dennis.The crisis came at the Hungarian GP, where Dennis was already fighting -- unsuccessfully -- to fend off accusations that his cars had benefited from technical information passed to one of his engineers by a disaffected Ferrari employee. After qualifying, during which both Alonso and Hamilton had played unsporting tricks on each other, the Spaniard admitted that he and the team's test driver (Pedro de la Rosa, also Spanish) had exchanged e-mails about the possibility of using the Ferrari data to improve their own cars' performance.Dennis, anxious to mitigate the findings of a forthcoming FIA enquiry, immediately contacted the federation to admit the existence of the correspondence. Although what happened next has not been confirmed by either side, it's widely believed that Alonso reacted with an open threat. Shocked to find that an ace negotiating card had been taken away from him, he announced he would "invent" further incriminating emails unless Dennis guaranteed him number-one status over Hamilton.While Grand Prix racing has always been a hotbed of political infighting, such openly treacherous behavior between a driver and his team, especially in mid-season, is all but unknown. To have held Dennis to ransom like that was a monumental misjudgment and that alone would certainly have justified the team boss in suspending Alonso's contract forthwith. That he didn't do so is perhaps explained by the realization that the incident would've drawn the attention of McLaren's multi-million-dollar sponsors to his inability to handle his own drivers.The "spygate" scandal would eventually cost McLaren-Mercedes a $100-million fine. Adding to Dennis's torment was the loss of the world drivers' title, closely disputed to the very end of the season by three drivers, including both McLaren men. A win for Raikkonen in the deciding round, in Brazil, left the Finn as champion with 110 points. Hamilton and Alonso finished joint second, with 109.Alonso's year at McLaren revealed much about his character. His speed is uncontested, and he's often looked unbeatable, even in a slightly inferior car. He's obviously proud, defiantly so at times, and that's no bad thing in a sportsman. He's suspicious to the point of vengeful, and shrewd, at least when he's driving. Out of the car, though, he sometimes appears to be short of street smarts, which may be the consequence of his education having been curtailed by a racing career that began when his father gave him his first kart at the age of four.If Alonso had been less paranoid last year, he would've done what so many other top competitors have done and looked inside himself for increased performance. Instead of complaining that his teammate was receiving preferential treatment, he would've buckled down and looked for ways to outperform him.It remains to be seen whether Fernando Alonso has the ability to do just that. Some of his critics perceive fundamental weaknesses in him, while others suggest his lack of judgment could mean he'll never win another world title, possibly not even another Grand Prix. Barring unforeseen circumstances, a race win is certainly not in the cards this year. Only the years to come will tell whether he has it in him to win that coveted third title.

Has to be one of the most annoying articles I have read in a long time.Besides statements like "grandstanding drive" which are silly from a technical point of view, the author can't seem to leave 2007 behind. Move on, 2007 is over, nobody cares about your stupid new conspiracy theories like Alonso threatening to invent fictitious emails.

"it's difficult not to speculate that Alonso's merciless grandstanding drive ... contributed to the smoky blow up"A statement that makes no sense from a technical point of view!How does a "grandstanding drive" blow up an engine???Last I checked, every driver in F1 go as fast as they can.